- Group Hazing A New Employee Is Locked In A Meat Freezer For 15 Minutes Before Being Let Out Dog Food Is Put In A New F 1 (75.06 KiB) Viewed 49 times
• Are practical jokes ever acceptable in the workplace? Aresome less ethical than others?
• Do you think it is ethical for management to support suchpractical jokes?
• Is it unethical for a manager not to warn new employees that they may be subject to a practical joke as part of an initiation process?
Group Hazing A new employee is locked in a meat freezer for 15 minutes. before being let out. Dog food is put in a new fireman's dinner without his knowledge. A new employee at a jail is asked to get on the intercom and page Jack Meoff. Are these examples of practical jokes and a form of initiation for new employees? Or is it something else? One of the best-kept secrets of the workplace is workplace hazing. Critics opposed to stunts like the ones above say that those would fall under hazing. And they say it is unethical because it is intentional humiliation of a person and has no purpose other than to show that employee his or her place in the organization. And it could be dangerous. As evidenced by some of the hazing done in colleges, stunts that start as practical jokes can often be deadly. What if the new employee in the meat locker had been left in it a minute too long? What if there was something in the dog food that the new fireman had been allergic to? Would it still have been considered harmless initiation or would it have been considered hazing? Supporters of such antics say that it is not a form of hazing but of harmless practical jokes by groups of employees who have been in the organization for a while and who, themselves, have been subjected to the same practical jokes. And, according to these proponents, such a practice does serve a purpose. Anytime a new person enters a group, the group becomes temporarily unstable while the new group member attempts to learn the rules and the existing group members learn to trust the new one. So, these practical jokes can build cohesion between employees who must often work together to get a job done. In this chapter, you learned that for a group to be effective and perform well, it must be cohesive. Your text lists several ways to build cohesion. Proponents of workplace initiation say that such practical jokes will build cohesion. It is a way for employees to get to know each other better and establish a common bond. Natasha Josefowitz, from San Diego State University, and Herman Gadon, from the University of California-San Diego, explain that it ensures that new employees learn and respect the rules of the group. They further state that membership in a group should be earned and considered a privilege. When employees successfully handle a practical joke, they earn the right to be part of a particular group. Without such initiation practices, it may take longer for employees to be accepted, or they may not become accepted at all. So initiation practices such as those stated above actually have positive benefits for new employees. Critics believe that the only benefit such jokes have is to those employees carrying out the joke. For those employees, it establishes a hierarchy of who is in charge, who not to cross, and who has the most power. It establishes dominance and fear. And it becomes even more unethical when supervisors or managers know that such practices go on and do nothing about it, such as warn new employees or punish those employees who pull the practical jokes.